In the game of sports, we must practice if we want to win. And not every practice will yield a game win, but there is mastery when you have a focus on the end goal. The focus is the same as the practice of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are five areas of practice to master SEO for your website, which includes optimizing your website to be mobile-friendly.
First, an athlete must know its competitor. In SEO knowing what keywords or phrases that are successfully attracting our competitor’s customer and how your customer searches for our product/services on the internet. Start by creating a spreadsheet to list topics, products, or services related to your business. Then utilize a free keyword research tool (SEMrush, etc.).
Secondly, use best practices for On-Page SEO, which is the practice of using research keywords or phrases on the assigned landing page. Focus on having the keywords or phrases natural fitting into your copy. Google focuses on top-ranking content, which serves the user first. For each page, I recommend using the keywords 2-4 times. There are a couple of key places where the keywords should appear. The keyword places are:
- Page title
- Page meta description
- URL
- H1 or H2
- Image alt tags
Thirdly, always optimize the speed of your website pages. It may be a hassle and out of your league, but it is worth the time, energy, and cost in hiring a specialist to help you. And as mentioned before, your website must be mobile-responsive. Google has made the speed of loading pages and mobile optimization a priority and a ranking factor. Just like in baseball, a player must know how to work the infield and outfield.
And our fourth practice is building links. Backlinking is most important in managing the day to day SEO of your website. Your link-building efforts need to be focused on quality over quantity. Your links need to be reviewed to ensure they are active and not broken. And most of all relevant to your content. We suggest finding other businesses who align with your target audience and try to establish a relationship. Either way, link building is a great way to expand your brand’s reach to form a lasting and beneficial partnership and earn a link or two.
The final and fifth area to master the practice of SEO is to review the four areas on a routine basis. As keywords in search by your customer can change. The website URLs or backlinks may become broken and need to be addressed. But most importantly, Google may change what the requirements are for optimization of your websites crawlability. Changes made by Google make it essential for you to stay on top of your SEO review.
These top SEO practicing tactics will help your website rank among your competitors. When we play with SEO, it is a marathon, not a sprint. If you have any questions with getting started with your SEO, please leave a comment.
References:
Markov, I. (2019, August 6). SEO Basics: A Noob-Friendly 5-Step Guide to SEO Success. Retrieved from https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-basics/